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36 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”

JQ has an update on the Carmichael mine implosion at The Conversation. (No link to avoid moderation but easy to find.) An additional question for JQ’s next post here: what do Adani think they are doing? They are not putting any more real money in, but a lot of top management effort.

Hypotheses:
1. It’s an attempt to blackmail the Queensland govt. into subsidising the project.
2. Mr. Adani trying to save face, or just being bloody-minded (anything Aussies can do, Indians can do worse).
3. Underlings trying to save face, careers and stock options.
4. Trying to hold up the stock price.
5. A long-shot bet on the coal price bouncing back, for some quite unexplained reason.
Enlightenment welcome.

pablo :
Thanks J-D. At the back of my query was the issue …would the DNC have time to convene and determine who’s next? Unprecedented it would seem.

Correct that there’s no direct precedent; it seems to me that the DNC would be very highly motivated to treat it as a high priority and act with dispatch, but we won’t know for sure until the situation actually arises. (The same applies equally to the Republican National Committee if they had to deal with a corresponding situation.)

In 1872 Horace Greeley, nominated by the (dissident) Liberal Republicans and endorsed by the Democrats, died between the casting of the popular vote and the voting of the electoral college; but the popular vote had already chosen electors a majority of whom were pledged to vote for incumbent Republican President Grant, so it made no difference who the Democratic electors voted for and the party did not designate a single official substitute candidate. The largest number of the Democratic electors voted for Greeley’s official vice-presidential running mate, some for other people, and a few for Greeley even though he was dead (the Congress, which has the official responsibility for receiving and tallying the votes of the electoral college, rejected the votes for Greeley as invalid).

Although that’s not an exactly parallel situation, it’s worth noting that Democratic and Republican candidates for electoral college positions have been nominated and those who are elected to the college would have the same constitutional right to exercise their votes even if their party did not have an officialy designated candidate for the Presidency.

On my fb page I see that you Canadians are defacing your paper currency to make one of your somebodies look like Spock from Startrek.

We are? Nobody told me! Why was I not consulted?

I wonder if it was political correctness of the patriachal kind.…

I suspect it was partly due to the fact that there was no journalism schools and reporters either graduated from the school of hard knocks or from some respectable field at university. They had the background and experience to evaluate the actual value of the news item.

My suspicion is that journalism schools teach the techniques but don’t give the experience required in many cases.

It also is probably due to technological advances that a)demand MORE new items to feed a relentless media and b) what appears to be shortening attention spans for anything but celebrities and sports.

I did enjoy Hemmingway in my teens

Detested him at first encounter and have never changed my mind. I was thinking of his career as a reporter not a “writer”.

I am not sure that Churchill was a drunk, he just was never quite sober. Perhaps just a bit tiddly all time.

I was just listening to an interview about US Presidents’ health and the quoted expert said that he thought it was unlikely from the testimony of Regan’s doctors that had Alzheimers while president and they were watching him like hawks. He just naturally forgot things. I am not sure how much better this is.

Americans really have Hobson’s choice in this election. Hillary is physically unfit and Donald is mentally unfit. Both are morally unfit. Both want more endless, pointless and destructive war. Both are directly connected to outright corruption and dirty deals.

About doctors who look after presidents and their health or welfare, I’m not impressed with doctors and their ability to observe objectively or to diagnose ‘alzheimers’ from observation alone.

Speaking from experience with some work I did in the past assessing the cognitive deficits of people post stroke, it is very difficult to determine the actual deficits and the functioning level with respect to people who pre-stroke had high levels of social skills. Perhaps that is just as true and relevant in the case of diagnosing alzheimers in Reagan.

Hemmingway? ” I was thinking of his career as a reporter not a “writer”.”

It would probably reveal something ‘true’ about his self if we wanted to spend the time and effort working out the core assumptions he makes about life and the universe that underpin the stories he tells in both his reporting and his novels.

About doctors who look after presidents and their health or welfare, I’m not impressed with doctors and their ability to observe objectively or to diagnose ‘alzheimers’ from observation alone.
Speaking from experience with some work I did in the past assessing the cognitive deficits of people post stroke, it is very difficult to determine the actual deficits and the functioning level with respect to people who pre-stroke had high levels of social skills. Perhaps that is just as true and relevant in the case of diagnosing alzheimers in Reagan.

Hemmingway? ” I was thinking of his career as a reporter not a “writer”.

It would probably reveal something ‘true’ about his self if we wanted to spend the time and effort working out the core assumptions he makes about life and the universe that underpin the stories he tells in both his reporting and his novels.

@Julie Thomas
I am definitely out of popular culture. I had never heard of spocking a $5 bill. I’ll have to keep a closer on on my fives for the next little while. I also seem to have missed the news that Leonard Nimoy had died.

Good point about the social skills compensating. I believe I heard of a case of a master chess player ? or other skilled performer claiming he was deteriorating mentally but to the outside observer, the skill level was so high that it was not noticeable.

Good to read Professor Stiglitz is publishing in the USA on topics on which Prof Quiggin publishes in Australia.

Prof. Stiglitz uses the marginal productivity theory as a unifying them for his critique. I am sure he has a reason for doing so – he writes primarily for the USA audience and I assume he chose the conceptual framework he knows is the prevailing one in the USA.

I’d like to note here that the marginal productivity theory is devoid of financial capital (ie no finance sector at all). Hence, the point you are making about debt creation is excluded in line one, so to speak. Prof Stiglitz nevertheless hints at the role of debt in rent seeking by writing about banks lending to people who own real estate to acquire more real or financial assets.